`Graceful Swans' paints portrait of the Pumpkins in tumult

October 12, 2002|By Patrick Z. McGavin. Special to the Tribune.

Though it is closer to something you find on television than "Gimme Shelter" or "The Last Waltz," Bart Lipton's "Graceful Swans of Never: The Smashing Pumpkins" is a precise, compulsively engaging video documentary about the formation, contentious rise and bittersweet (and sadly premature) end of the seminal Chicago rock band.

It is a little too circumscribed and stylistically repetitive to fully engage its subject's innovation, daring and imagination, offering almost nothing that has not been previously explored. To its credit, Lipton's movie delivers in other ways, most successfully as a portrait of the artist in tumult. It is somewhat parochially conceived, conventionally drawn of direct address interviews with band members, local music analysts, the group's tour manager and the occasional stray voice of a rival rock band (such as a couple of Cheap Trick musicians and Dave Navarro of Jane's Addiction).

The best passages come in the middle, covering not the rock star ascendancy of the band but the mesmerizing, introspective and highly idiosyncratic nature of its artistry, bound in the group's excellent lead singer, Billy Corgan. Discussing the brilliant work on the band's second album, "Siamese Dream," Corgan acknowledges resurrecting his dark childhood traumas and private nightmares that inspired the stark, pungent writing of "Today" and "Disarm." His candor and vulnerability imbue these scenes with a withering verisimilitude and authenticity.

"It was hard to write that stuff and then go back into life," he says. With his highly suggestive, deep-lined face, Corgan's father, William Sr., is a jolt against the safe, conservative choices of the other interview subjects.

If there is little doubt about the band's dominant leader, Lipton does provide sufficient coverage to the group's other members, Darcy, James Iha and drummer Jimmy Chamberlin. Unfortunately, the second-half chronicle of collapse, death and rehabilitation feels somewhat punishing and familiar, effectively suppressing the emotional charge and self-inspection of the opening part. Fortunately, "Graceful Swans" returns enough to the music to justify the existence of the documentary.

"Suddenly I'm awake again," Corgan says at the end, a feeling likely to be shared. The program also features a rare exhibition of the group's early video work.

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"Graceful Swans of Never: The Smashing Pumpkins," (star)(star)(star), directed and produced by Bart Lipton, plays this week at the Gene Siskel Film Center of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (164 N. State St.; call 312-846-2800 for show times). Running time: 1:05. No MPAA rating (adult scenes and content, drug references).